


Polaris

by CupidStrikes



Series: Keith Week 2016 [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Some allusions to past body horror, angsty, mentions of past violence/torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 23:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8180143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CupidStrikes/pseuds/CupidStrikes
Summary: Keith trembles in his arms with the force of it, supernova and black hole all at once.





	

**Author's Note:**

> October 1st: Space/Stars | Free Day!
> 
> +Supernovas
> 
> Heeeere we go. The Sheith I have been waiting to write and needed a reason other than self-indulgence to write! I love these two so friggin' much.
> 
> Please take note of the tags as the panic attack is graphic.
> 
> Italics are Never Look Away by Vienna Teng which is my Sheith JAM.

**Polaris**

  


_I want the storm inside you awoken now_

_I want your warm bright eyes_

_To never look away._

  


“It's pretty bad, isn't it?”

  


Keith's fingers pause on the first curve of a particularly jagged scar on Shiro's torso. This one runs down from near his left nipple and across his ribs until it ends before it can disappear onto his back. Keith finds the end of it, letting his hand rub meaningless patterns up and down Shiro's, feeling smooth skin, ribs, and rough, raised scar tissue all, and he presses a kiss against his lips, then his jaw. He makes sure that he has Shiro's full attention.

  


“No, it's not.”

  


Shiro is looking away and Keith feels something in his chest ache in reply. He braces himself on an elbow and reaches up, slides his hand under Shiro's cheek and gently but firmly forces Shiro's gaze back on him. Shiro meets his eyes and then looks down when Keith's hands touch his body again. Back up again.

  


Holding his gaze, Keith ducks his head and shifts down the bed until he sits at Shiro's feet. He touches the scar that runs across the front of his ankle, from a wound that much have nearly severed his Achilles tendon, then moves up to one on his calf.

  


Knee-cap. One that still gives Shiro grief when he's tired or sore. One that shattered bone.

  


There is a wide one on his thigh that runs deep. Keith can feel the extent of the scar tissue beneath the skin. He doesn't linger on it for long.

  


Navel. Below his belly button and with just an inch or so of clearance before his pubic bone. Keith thumbs it, disturbing the waistband of Shiro's underwear briefly before he takes his hand away.

  


Shiro's torso is easily the most scarred part of him; not all the scars are battle-won. There are plenty that are too straight, too thin, and Keith's stomach roils at the placement. This is not a conventional Y-incision, but Keith knows the purpose of the one that runs sternum to stomach, stopping just above the shallow indent of Shiro's belly button.

  


For a terrible, selfish moment, Keith hopes that Shiro never remembers that one. Hopes it is too far buried, or that he was deeply, firmly unconscious for it.

  


The scars on Shiro's forearm are thin and wide both, all defensive, and he kisses the series of faint parallel scars in the crook of his elbow that range from millimetres to an inch long. Hesitation marks. Keith can't even begin to imagine it.

  


The seam where his Galra prosthetic meets skin is surprisingly neat, but Keith kisses it all the same, slotting his fingers between the gaps in the metal ones as easy as breathing. Their hands fit together as they used to. Before Voltron, before Kerberos, before Shiro's attention turned skyward and his feet still firmly on the ground.

  


He touches the scar on Shiro's ribs again before he looks up, and Keith's breath catches in his throat when he does.

  


The lights in Shiro's room have been turned down low, but there is light enough to catch off of the wetness on Shiro's face and shoot it through with reflection stars and ignite a comet tail across his cheek as Keith surges up.

  


Shiro turns his head to meet the kiss but it doesn't land.

  


Keith's lips are pressed against the tip of the scar across his face.

  


Shiro goes nearly cross-eyed to see, but he knows just from the pressure and warmth of Keith's lips, having traced the same shape many times, and when Keith kisses along it and follows the path with his thumb, Shiro recalls anther and darkdarkdark and pressure, and the threat of claws as someone touches his face.

  


Keith feels the moment Shiro tenses and he takes his face in both of his hands, splaying his fingers on his cheeks away from the scar and he sits back. He digs his knees into the mattress either side of Shiro's hips and calls to him. His thumbs brush up against his cheekbones and beyond, through his eyeliner, now smudged to bruises around his eyes. Shiro squeezes his eyes shut and Keith catches the tears that fall unbidden in the movement.

  


“Shiro.”

  


Shiro twitches, and turns his head away.

  


“Shiro. Takashi.”

  


Shiro comes back into himself with a start that nearly knocks Keith off the bed, but the latter braces himself and rides it out, waits as Shiro gasps in a breath and prompts chokes on it. From this vantage point, his pupils are tiny specks in the centre of his rapidly moving irises.

  


“Shiro. Shiro, look at me.”

  


Keith leans over him, filling Shiro's vision so that he has no choice but to narrow his world down to the two of them.

  


“It's alright, just breathe for me now.”

  


Keith's voice wavers on the first syllables before he forces it out. It's solid. An order. But as gentle as he can manage.

  


“One. Two.”

  


Keith's thumbs resume their steady swipes across Shiro's cheeks and he feels them grow damp as he counts up to ten. Starts again. Again, and again, until finally he feels Shiro's trembling begin to subside and his breathing settles to an even, deep rhythm that could almost be mistaken for sleep were it not for the way that his body is still rigid and tense beneath him.

  


“Keith.”

  


Shiro's voice is barely a whisper and he swallows hard afterwards as if the word had torn itself from his throat. Keith reaches down and takes Shiro's human hand into his own and webs their fingers together.

  


“Here, Shiro, I'm here. You're safe,” he presses that hand to his own cheek, and smiles when Shiro tucks a lock of his unruly hair behind his ear. Shiro returns it for several fleeting seconds before looking away again and Keith can see a red flush blooming beneath his scar.

  


“I-”

  


“Don't you dare apologise,”

  


Shiro looks up at Keith as abruptly as if he had slapped him. He swallows, but Keith cuts him off before he can open his mouth for another try.

  


“You have nothing to be sorry for. I....shit, Shiro,”

  


Keith has thrown the word “hate” around plenty of times. He told the staff at the first orphanage, and most of the other children there, that he hated them. He's told each of his foster and adoptive parents the same. Several gods, and Pluto and all its moons when Shiro disappeared. And now in this moment he knows that he never truly meant it as he does now as he feels it crawl up each of his limbs like a rash. Hot, bright pricks of anger and frustration that there is not one single entity that Keith can exact revenge upon for this; for taking the young man that liked walking in the rain and that rescued trapped sandbeetles, and always tried to see the good in everyone, and showing him the very worst of the universe, and then leaving him to believe that the end result was something to hide and apologise. That the evidence was shameful...

  


He's never been good at hiding his emotions, especially those that burn beneath his skin as sharply as this. Keith moves to take Shiro's other hand, but the movement is a little too sharp and Shiro flinches, just barely, but enough that Keith drops his hands between his legs, letting them rest on Shiro's chest.

  


“None of this. None of it is your fault.”

  


The hand on his cheek settles on his shoulder instead, and the familiar weight grounds him. Keith takes a breath and settles himself.

  


“You were always going to come back to me different from when you left, different how doesn't matter. I still love you, Shiro.”

  


Keith lifts one of his hands slowly, then the other and lets his fingertips ghost over the chart of Shiro's body, tracing each scar like the constellations and asterisms he had memorised as a child; Orion, Ursa Major, Minor, to polestars and guiding stars within them Navigating him home. At last his hands come up to rest on Shiro's shoulders and then sliding up to cradle Shiro's head as he leans in. He moves slowly. Gives Shiro time to see what he's doing and react, and when Keith gets close enough Shiro leans up to kiss him and there are strong arms around him and bringing him down, down, down. Shiro shakes around and beneath him and Keith trembles into him, the rage from before coming down into something else and his fingers quiver around Shiro's still when their hands meet.

  


“I love you too, Keith.”

  


Keith's breath hitches in his throat and he smiles against Shiro's neck before he pulls back just enough to kiss Shiro again. A hand settles into his hair and, here, pressed chest-to-chest with Shiro on an alien ship millions of light years away from Earth and everything they knew to be true and familiar, Keith feels as if he has come home at last after months away. He feels the memory of the past year, of the grief over absence and not knowing, pale and fade away in the face of this...Of Shiro, here, warm, and tangible and still wanting him, still loving him, and Keith thinks that somewhere along the line he forgot Shiro just a little bit as the feeling comes over him like a rush of blood to the head and he feels dizzy with it. He absorbs all of the little touches and murmurs Shiro gives him, greedy from emptiness, and he kisses Shiro between his words until he can feel Shiro's heart racing beneath his own and the hand in his hair clenching ever so slightly every so often.

  


Shiro says it again: “I love you, Keith,” and Keith trembles in his arms with the force of it, supernova and black hole all at once, and like he might just be glowing a little, and when Shiro falls he falls with him as if a gravity is tugging at him. Keeping them together.

  


They don't fall asleep until the room has already begun to brighten, the Castle lights tuned to simulate artificial sunlight in the absence or distance of a real article. Keith wakes to Shiro's arms around him and his head resting on his chest. He brushes Shiro's white fringe back out of his eyes and smiles as he opens them, slowly blinks and looks up at Keith. Up close, he can see the gradient of colour in Shiro's eyes, the darker grey ringing his pupils and the flecks of silver, and dotted with refractions of the lights, Keith fancies that he could see an entire galaxy there if he looked hard enough, and of all those that exist, and are right here at his fingertips in this ship, this wonder of alien technology and a little magic, Keith knows the only galaxy, the only solar system, that he wants to explore, is one with Shiro at his side.

 

_Let me uncover the silver in your dark hair_

_The weight of your bones_

_I want to witness the beauty of your repair_

_The shape you’ve grown._


End file.
